He retweeted a picture of Madeleine McCann tweeted to him by user @CarlRoney who had told Hulk that she was his niece and that she had just won at hide and seek.

Many of his followers retweeted the picture while others replied to him trying to alert him to the fact that he’d been duped.

He wasn’t the only one getting feedback. @CarlRoney spent this afternoon defending his ‘joke’ and even tweeted Frankie Boyle to say ‘I’m starting to know how you feel’.

But later on he played his own game of hide and seek, switching his Twitter account to private and changing his information to ‘go away’.

In September, U.S. business tycoon Donald Trump inadvertently retweeted a picture of serial killers Fred and Rose West.

Trump, who presents the US version of The Apprentice, was sent a photograph of the pair, along with the message: ‘My parents who passed away always said you were a big inspiration. Can you please RT for their memory?’